I hear ya Rob, but these decisions live in the context of the startup’s runway. If you have 18 months of runway, that means you might have 12+ months of iteration cycle time to learn and gather evidence to entice new investors that the company deserves to continue to live. If the search space is too wide for too long, then one may not have enough time. So from my perspective, sometimes “focus” is using informed judgement to pick a problem/solution within a customer segment and really make some progress.
So too much focus is bad because you might optimize to a small market. But too little focus may drive the company over a cliff, without sufficient value being creative.
That is why being a founder, especially the CEO, is so hard. It’s a nuanced, very specific balance to find.
I hear ya Rob, but these decisions live in the context of the startup’s runway. If you have 18 months of runway, that means you might have 12+ months of iteration cycle time to learn and gather evidence to entice new investors that the company deserves to continue to live. If the search space is too wide for too long, then one may not have enough time. So from my perspective, sometimes “focus” is using informed judgement to pick a problem/solution within a customer segment and really make some progress.
So too much focus is bad because you might optimize to a small market. But too little focus may drive the company over a cliff, without sufficient value being creative.
That is why being a founder, especially the CEO, is so hard. It’s a nuanced, very specific balance to find.